Has tech hardware really come on in last 10 years?

System

Under the hood there have been massive advances in almost everything over the last 10 years however to the user facing side of it there has only been a slow change. Unfortunately very few read news sources that cover the under the hood side of technology so are unaware of it.

The most obvious is the Raspberry Pi, a credit card sized computer that runs on an amp of power and has as much computing power as a PC from 10 years ago.

Cornucopia

Tarambor wrote: »

The most obvious is the Raspberry Pi, a credit card sized computer that runs on an amp of power and has as much computing power as a PC from 10 years ago.

There is now a (hidden from the general public) entire class of microcomputers and microcontrollers - both in chip and module form. These appear in all sorts of shapes and sizes, essentially based on the various ways in which they will be operated, including the many, many applications that revolve around embedding in other equipment.

The other feature of this class of computing platform is price. We are still paying £300+ for a PC/Laptop Windows or Mac device. This class of devices start with chips and modules that cost less than £1.

For anyone interested, see: Arduino, ARM and PIC.

ClarkeKent

vacheron wrote: »

A couple of years ago I posted something similar on Facebook regarding the OS UI on most desktop machines.

I can list a lot of major tech evolutions (especially in PC hardware and software) which I can remember from the 1990's and early 2000's, but since then things really seem to have been a gradual evolution rather than any huge breakthroughs.

The thing I have really appreciated over the last 10 years however is the development and ease of use of cloud storage apps such as Dropbox etc. Everything I receive digitally is now immediately stored on the cloud meaning it is instantly backed up with revision history and deleted file recovery and is then immediately accessable on every other device I own including my work PC.

I also now run a Plex media server from home which means I can access all my music and movies on the go so I don't need any physical CD's or DVD's cluttering up the cars or the house.

Both of the above together means that I have not had to carry any kind of physical storage around with me for at least the last 6 or 7 years.

Exactly, my point is. You see films set in the future Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell, Back to the Future 2 etc and you think of all the advancements in the future.

But in reality I think we always over-predict tech advancements. I mean, if you were shown todays world in 2008 would you really be that blown away? I don't think I would

prowla

These are the significant advances which immediately come to mind:

• fast internet,
• smart phones,
• HDTV,
• the start of electric cars becoming mainstream,
• Cloud computing,
• large storage capacities,
• online services.

On the flipside, computers themselves haven't fundamentally changed, still the same old CPU/RAM/disk von Neumann architecture and a GUI pasted onto the front of a30-40 year old OS (the leading OS was written in the 1970s and the other main one evolved from a single-user program loader).